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No matter what happens from here, Roger Shawyer can feel at least a bit of vindication. There’s no way to know whether his potentially world-changing new fuel-free thruster called the EM Drive will be debunked, as many predict. But even so, his career-spanning obsession will never again seem quite as absurd as it has in the past. In spite of decades of professional skepticism and rejection, Shawyer’s technology has finally swept up the popular culture in the dream of the perfect next-gen space drive. All that remains to be seen is whether scientists will follow.

The recent and explosive popularity of the EM Drive is mostly due to a couple of borderline-sheepish reports from NASA itself, which seem to confirm that the drive can produce very small amounts of reliable thrust while at the same time distancing the agency from the results. The initial announcement of testing actively washed its hands of the results, but a more recent report actually tested the drive in a vacuum chamber, shoring up one of the major sources of criticism of early, in-atmosphere testing.

NASA may not know how the thing produces thrust, but in its own words, “NASA Eagleworks has now nullified the prevailing hypothesis that thrust measurements were due to thermal convection.” Eagleworks doesn’t necessarily speak with the unified voice of the NASA establishment, but it’s a high-enough profile platform that the mainstream media was forced to take notice.

The EM Drive could help realize our dreams of real space-faring — if it actually works.

Still, NASA’s lukewarm approach to its own results has given plenty of ammunition to both sides of the EM Drive debate. One side sees the other as gullible and ignorant of science, the other as closed-minded and ignorant of history. Not since the Airplane on a Treadmill disaster of ought-eight have net-nerds known such fierce fighting as this.

The crux of the problem is the EM Drive’s central claim, which makes it both impossible to believe and impossible to ignore: This thruster allegedly requires no fuel to work. This means that an array of EM Drives could be powered by solar panels to provide infinite low acceleration, solving many of the most intractable problems with long-distance spaceflight. Eagleworks researcher Harold White went so far as to predict that a manned mission could get to Mars in just 70 days by producing just 0.4 Newtons/kW, or about 10 times the power efficiency of a modern ion thruster.

Its allegedly fuel-free nature also means that the drive may directly contradict the law of conservation of momentum, since it would be producing a forward-facing force without an equal and opposite force acting in the other direction. This makes it seem uncomfortably close to an attempt at a perpetual motion machine.

While it’s unlikely that Shawyer has built the world’s first real refutation of the fundamental laws of physics, it is possible that the drive does conserve momentum via some currently unknown process. The most widely cited candidate is a process called vacuum polarization, which is theorized to create short-lived particles in the vacuum of space, which the EM Drive basically turns into a plasma and ejects in a specific direction. If this idea is validated, the EM Drive would be using these particles as its version of the fuel that all other drives must bring along with it, thus perhaps staying on the right side of the physical properties of the universe.

It’s also possible that the drive is some sort of far-out version of a Star Trek warp drive — that its electric field is contracting space in front of the drive and/or expanding it behind the drive. Eagleworks tested this with laser pulses, finding repeatable results indicating that the drive was causing distortion of a laser. It’s thought this could be due to spacetime distortion, but unlike the latest thrust reading these laser tests were conducted in-atmosphere. Going forward, the researchers want to re-run these interferometer experiments in a vacuum, to rule out the possibility that the air caused the observed laser diffraction.

EM Drive’s biggest boosters don’t claim to have a robust understanding of its mechanics — only empirical evidence showing that it works. Everyone seems to be taking a measured approach, here — even someone as far-seeing and confident as Elon Musk won’t take a definitive stand for or against these results.

Fundamentally, that means that the EM Drive is now a scientific controversy, rather than a popular one. All on its own, that’s a huge achievement, and arguably a win for the EM Drive’s supporters. Their central quest was to get the technology serious testing by serious researchers. In a sense, even if that testing invalidates the drive, the need to involve high-level researchers to do so proves that the boosters were not quite as irrational as many have claimed.

The important quantity for a propulsion device is the momentum generated per amount of ‘fuel’.

So it’s not really about energy.

It is possible to ‘convert’ usable energy directly into momentum by converting it to radiation.The momentum, p is given by p = mv. We also know E = mc2 by Einstein. So the effective mass of the converted photons is E / c2. Substituting into the momentum formula, we get p = E/c, or E / 300 000 000 in standard units. In other words, to accelerate 1 kg to 3.6 km/h using directed light, 300 megajoules of energy are needed…

Conversely, if we used this energy to directly accelerate 1 kg of matter, we would be able to accelerate it to about 62354 km/h…

So hurling stuff backwards is really a lot more efficient for generating trust given our current technologies.

Converting fuel directly into light for propulsion only makes economic sense when using a propulsion device that can convert most of the available matter into energy, like an antimatter drive. This of course assumes we do not have access to a hidden source of momentum, which the EM drive would have if it works.

Cowpocalypse_Now

“…I’m far from being an expert”

Really?

Kyle

I’m a little confused as to what you’re implying in your comment.

Cowpocalypse_Now

Really?

Kyle

Yeah. If it was an insult, then it was an extremely pointless attempt at trolling. If it was a compliment, then thank you, and it wasn’t clear.

IAF101

Matter and Energy are interchangeable -but at what ratio ? The popular E=mc2 should give us some clue as to the kind of energy required and this is no where close to using that order of magnitude of energy.

conservativemind12

^ This we do not need.

alexbenjm

It is a very confusingly poorly written article. Nobody has claimed that EM-drive is a fuel-free device which is plain impossible. You can’t do any work without sources of energy.

Really what you meant to say it’s a propellant-less device, meaning it doesn’t rely on stuff being thrown backwards to move forward. What I’ve read of the EM-drive, it claims to take in energy inputs, transform it via some unknown process into thrust without need for additional mass to expel.

Mr_Blastman

Yeah I’ve seen a few articles make that claim–“fuel free.” It isn’t fuel free, but as you point out, propellant free. The device requires electrical input of some sorts–and when talking about spacecraft, having an adequate specific power ratio is imperative.

For Earth->Mars and back, solar might be okay but don’t expect huge rates of acceleration. Certainly not one G! To accomplish 1 G, even with a specific power of 100 W/kg solar array (the one of the ISS is only 1 W/kg !!!), assuming it can be built large enough and sturdy enough at that ratio (I don’t think it can), it would weigh about 24,000 tons for a 200,000 lb spacecraft.

And mind you, we need more than 1 G of acceleration for a spacecraft to not need booster rockets, launchpads or more. This device puts out 0.4 newtons per kilowatt. As it stands, one of two things need to change: increase the force output of the device (that will happen over time if it is proven valid) or increase power generation efficiency.

Even nuclear reactors would weigh about 22,000 tons to output the 2.6 gigawatts needed for 1 G of acceleration–at least based on data I can find publicly. I’m almost certain it is inaccurate.

And that isn’t even considering the additional thrust needed to accelerate all that mass the reactor brings to the spacecraft. The force to energy ratio will definitely have to improve.

The device isn’t fuel free at all! What we lose in propellant we replace with power generation and as I’ve thought for a few decades now, the biggest obstacle beyond creating this (or similar) technology will be power generation. Batteries obviously don’t cut it.

So we need to start pouring insane amounts of money into NASA to help them develop efficient spaceworthy nuclear power plants (convection differences due to lack of gravity in a sealed loop). The inverse square law assures us that solar is only a stop-gap and in the end, is a dead-end when it comes to exploration of the outer solar system and beyond.

johnBas5

The specific power per kilogram of the solar array cold be improved tremendous by using concentrated mirrors and thin film solar cells.
I reckon it would weigh much less!

Mr_Blastman

I think solar arrays are a waste of time unless we’re talking satellites and stations. The inverse square law guarantees diminishing returns the farther we travel from Earth in the system–and introduce a whole different problem with building and maintaining battery arrays. Batteries don’t last nearly as long as even a basic RTG or Nuclear plant, and for a craft that might bounce from planet to planet, mean time between servicing becomes an issue.

But nuclear also increases heat problems. And heat is a gigantic issue for a spacecraft.

It also is an issue for this drive. If you look at some of the technical diagrams and even photographs of the test rig, the first thing you might notice is the coolant system and large radiator it uses. The magnetron (microwave generator) gets hot, fast!

Which begs another question… where does all the generated radiation from the EM Drive go?

Emily Shelley

One thing’s discharge could be another thing’s necessity. Animals need oxygen to breath and we exhale carbon dioxide, plants need carbon dioxide to “breath” and they “exhale” oxygen.

In reference to the EmDrive, That radiation could perhaps be captured and converted for another beneficial use on-board the space-craft, right? So if we’re talking about microwave radiation, couldn’t it be used for cooking in the space-craft’s Kitchen? Or could it be used to heat up a hot-water heater to use for hot showers? Or is there some substance that can capture the expelled radiation(some sort of gel maybe?) until it can be used for something else later?

johnBas5

The microwaves (not converted into kinetic energy) are converted into heat.

pmoseman

I agree.

Mr_Blastman

Converting the radiation to electrical power would first and foremost be the biggest benefit.

You wouldn’t want to capture and hold the radiation because heat is a very dangerous thing on a spacecraft. Space is a natural insulator (vacuum) so ships must be clever in how they get rid of it–and ultimately, they need to get rid of the excess or they’ll end up cooking everyone inside.

When you start monkeying around with high-output zero propellant engines and nuclear power, besides being inexplored territory, heat managment becomes a critical part of the future spacecraft’s design.

You can always pump it back out into space in the form of… microwave/electromagnetic radiation (after converting it) or even dump it out as infra-red light. But harvesting and converting as much of it as possible to something useful is a good thing.

johnBas5

To answer your question about where does the radiation go.
If it does not get converted into kinetic energy then the radiation goes where all radiation goes. The microwaves get converted into heat, IR radiation.

Due to the inefficiencies of nuclear energy to electricity, you have a large amount of heat. This heat needs to be thrown away as much as the nuclear reactor and turbines add heat. Which means according to your post you need a large thermal radiator anyway.
If instead you would use thin film solar cells and solar concentration. It might be much more mass efficient for a small spacecraft to use solar power than nuclear. At least for anything including and closer than Mars.
And you don’t need batteries to stay in an orbit, only to accelerate. Thereby only needing a small amount of batteries for sudden acceleration for the purpose of collision avoidance and other reasons.

Mr_Blastman

Yes that’s the frustrating thing about nuclear power–as you point out, it is terribly inefficient. Most reactors lie in the 33-36% range of efficiency. Crazy, right? Of course, they’re using steam and turbines (in many) etc., so naturally, due to moving parts, head spread, dissipation, etc., a lot of the energy is lost to waste heat.

I think thermoelectric converters could help with his–but really it would require a complete overhaul of reactor design to harvest this heat in a better manner.

But what I really want to see is a craft able to output better than 1:1 thrust to weight(mass) to achieve unassisted transition from Earth to Space. Solar can’t provide nearly enough power for that.

I wouldn’t be so pessimistic about solar.
On a sunny day going to space with an optimized craft and optimized EMdrive and only using solar cells might become possible one day.

Mr_Blastman

I’ve always loved beam power transmission. It is kind of romantic, in a way. Out there, alone in space, completely at the whim of your friends back on Earth. With proper attenuation you can minimize the amount of energy lost to the Earth’s atmosphere, too. But even lasers spread out, too, so there’s that to contend with. But you could have a considerably smaller reactor onboard if you allow the beam to supply most of the initial acceleration.

I recall reading somewhere of a thermoelectric material with a higher efficiency, say 15-20%… Ah, yes, here’s something about it:

Nuclear efficiency isn’t really relevant simply because nuclear power is so much electricity per kilogram in terms of raw weight. The best power generator for a submarine is a nuclear reactor for that reason. It’s enough energy to power a small city in a relatively compact format. Solar panels need to be massive to supply as much power. Nuclear power currently is something like 1% efficient, but the amount of energy inside a gram of material is so great it can still power cities. We can certainly improve our nuclear technology though. It’s a fertile field of commercial research.

They work for things like satellites, but spacecraft still need to haul crap from earth, and attaching a football feild to a spacecraft for 6 people. Or attach a nuclear reactor and put thousands into space. The starship enterprise couldn’t run on solar panels, and we will not be a space-faring species until we can get thousands to hundreds of thousands of people in space.

Nuclear energy is a great gift. It’s a huge amount of power in a very tiny weight.

Heat is a huge issue. but when you have thousands of people on a star-ship, your going to need to dump waste heat anyways. Good thing about nuclear is it generates enough surplus energy to drive whatever heat dumping solution you need. I imagine a starship would have heat pipes for things like cooking water, showers, greenhouses to utilize at least part of the heat.

pmoseman

I wouldn’t peg 33% efficiency as bad, necessarily. Earth based solar collectors are not more efficient.

near the end dr. White is talking about what would be possible for a Mars mission if this technique were to be proven:
50t cargo
20t (2MW) NEP reactor
Q-truster bank @ 0,4 N/kW (800 N) for current design
resulting in a return trip of 246 days an a stay at mars of 70 d.

If the Q-thrusters were to be optimized to 4 N/kW (8000N) that would make the spacecraft break the 0.6 mG barrier which is the attraction to the sun at one AU (earth’s distance to the sun). Meaning you could fly directly to mars and have a 140 d return journey for a stay of 90 days.

Note that he is talking about a 2MW nuclear reactor of 20 tons. That is smaller than the one in the new Ohio class Sub. also if the design is with the reactor on a pole away from the craft, shielding would be much lighter (only in one direction), so your estimate may have to come down not only for the power but also for the weight/power.

Mr_Blastman

Yeah the mass requirement is a lot less if we’re only talking enough power to break the pull of the sun.

White is a smart guy. I’ve read papers by him over the years and he does some really interesting stuff. He’s not afraid to be bold and try new things–something that defined the NASA of old.

I guess how I see it is a device like this is a complete game-changer. It changes everything. The biggest limiting factor we’ve had in the space program since conception is propellant-based travel, both in space and from Earth to space.

If somehow they can optimize the EM Drive’s specific power to be thrust positive for the entire ship (ship, power plant, drive), rockets to space will be a thing of the pass. The world would be transformed overnight and a new age would dawn.

According to Roger Shawyer, the original British inventor of the drive, by utilizing superconducting technology such as S Band niobium cavities, they can dramatically increase the Q value (harmonic resonance)–so much so it would increase the specific thrust to 3.2 tonnes / KW. That’s huge!

There’s one problem… Whence achieving that the EM radiation pressure is so much that it causes mechanical deformation of the resonant chamber.

I’m sure they’ll figure out how to overcome that.

Marc GP

No, you are right. It’s not intrinsically fuel-free, but sometimes it could be :-). I mean, if you put solar cells, then it could keep going without any kind of fuel, because in that case they carry their own source of energy (the solar cells).

Anyway, for most missions they will indeed need to carry fuel, because just solar cells wouldn’t generate enough energy for those mission (specially if you want quick trips or trips far away from the Sun).

Even so it would be a huge improvement over our current engines, because they won’t need to carry the propellant to generate thrust. The nuclear fuel to keep an small nuclear reactor running over a decade is not so much mass. Nothing comparable with the mass we need to carry for propellant purposes in every other engine up to date.

johnBas5

I don’t consider it fuel-free. Even with sunlight being the fuel.
Just because it’s not matter doesn’t mean something can’t be fuel!

Remember everyone, in the EMdrive:
The microwave generator is the input device and the microwaves are the input energy.
Just because there is no propellant does not mean there is no energy input.

Magnus Blomberg

Shouldn’t “fuel” be substituted with “propellant” throughout this article?

johnBas5

Yes, the article is very sloppy.

Ulrich Werner

The damn thing breaks one of the most well tested laws of physics. So, for now I’ll stick with physics as we know it and let John Baez explain the rest:https://plus.google.com/u/1/117663015413546257905/posts/WfFtJ8bYVya
In short: The theoretical explanation given is utter bull… and the experiments are questionable even coming from Eagleworks.

There’s also nothing particularly quantum about this device as far as I can see. It’s macroscopic and uses relatively high energies. The “quantum explanation” using the words “quantum vacuum plasma” or whatever, could as well have been made up in a Star Trek: Voyager episode. Note also how the thrust has become smaller and smaller over time and different measurements…. I think this thing will disentangle in a puff of logic and reality soon.

Clarence

That’s an out of date article, and filled with confusion, even though the basic point is correct: This must be tested thoroughly. However, they have tested in a vaccum now, and claimed to still have thrust. Also, as with most articles on this two different devices are confused.

And yet. It breaks momentum conservation as it stands. As long as there is no explanation how this thing circumvents actio = reactio, and as long as the experiments yield smaller and smaller observed thrust with error bars containing zero, I’ll stick with conventional physics.

Kyle

Many things were conventional physics, until they weren’t. This could very well be an error. Error or not though, you should keep an open mind regarding it, and avoid taking a side until it has either been 100% proven, or 100% disproved.

Currently, this has practical tests leaning in favor of at least demonstrating that this isn’t 100% BS. If they truly believed that this was at ridiculous as many are making it out to be, then they wouldn’t have wasted time and energy testing it. I think these research teams are qualified to properly discern that.

Clarence

Simply because IF it is proven to work, they don’t know HOW it works doesn’t mean it violates momentum conservation or any of that. It means our theories are incomplete. Personally, I feel the next round of experiments are going to DISPROVE this, but I am all for doing experiments. Experiment trumps theory any day of year.

I’m pretty sure this will be disproven. And I’m happy for NASA to work on this as long as they aren’t directing too many funds towards it.

Mr_Blastman

What I think will be disproven is our understanding of it. The drive seems to work in both aspirated and vaccuum tests.

It is possible that there is a simple way to explain what is happening that we’re completely overlooking–but you can’t argue with experimental results, however much they might laugh in the face of existing laws.

If something is shown to happen, repeatibly through experimentation, first you must rule out if there is measurement tampering. If this is done, and it still is occuring, it is the laws themselves that need to be adapted and changed to the new findings.

Science is never static. It is constantly changing to adapt to our ever growing understanding of the universe.

Emily Shelley

The cool thing about this working in both aspirated and vacuum tests is that we get to skip that whole “you can’t open a hyperspace window inside atmosphere!” nonsense that I’ve seen in many sci-fi programs.

Mr_Blastman

Well if you did open up a wormhole corridor while on a planet it most likely would be catastrophic. The gravity well would displace a significant portion of matter, fracturing the world. How much of it? That depends on the size of the well.

This drive doesn’t create a gravity well, thankfully. At least as far as I can tell. So nothing to worry about! :)

pmoseman

Science has changed our knowledge but science itself has not changed.

ShreddyTheCat

I bet the drive will be shown not to break conservation of momentum because it is not a closed system.

pmoseman

Could the Earth’s magnetic field be significant here?

Emily Shelley

It’s called a bubble. It’s not a fancy term, and it’s not one that scientists like to use, but it is what it is. It’s a bubble, possibly even a small version of what a time dilation bubble would look like.

Bill

“will disentangle in a puff of logic and reality”

LOL

Improbability Drive

Marc GP

Yes, but it also happens to have been validated by three independent teams (the Chinese, and two different tests at NASA).

The results are not questionable, the engine produces thrust without needing a propellant.

Now we have to figure out what we have disregarded in our physics. This is how Science advances.

Ulrich Werner

As long as there is no peer reviewed publication, this is worth as much as someone posting a selfie on Facebook.

Thanks for the update on the scientific method…. See, I’m all for technological progress, but there is very little leeway for a classical electromagnetic device at 50W to do anything to space time. If it could we would have noticed long ago. So when this reddit article talks about metric fluctuations at at 50W *all* the alarm bells go off.

The results are questionable, since I haven’t seen a proper chart with error bars yet. And I agree with one of the other commenters here: I think what they will find is that the thing is not actually a closed system. That seems by far the easiest explanation (nature tends to go for these).

Mr_Blastman

“If it could we would have noticed long ago.”
You’ll only notice it if you are first looking for it to begin with…

Clarence

No, he’s right, at least IF you are talking about some of the theories about his thing works. I think with Shawyer’s theory that some Physicist somewhere said they should have been seeing these effects -greatly magnified and very very hard to miss – in the Large Hadron Collider.

I’m at this point about 50/50 about whether this effect is even real (and that’s far more generous than most Physicists at this point, but then I’m not a Physicist) though still (taking into account the past and just how hard to measure this super small stuff is) leaning towards it not being real. But still, despite the hundred years of working with resonant cavities and despite such things being used in all sorts of applications I can BELIEVE that a small effect might escape notice and simply have been unnoticed or chalked up to air currents more than once or twice. This is believable. But just remember that the reason that the Theorist and your average Physicist are so unimpressed by this isn’t just because of the existence of frauds or crackpots – it’s because most of science has been repeatedly tested and often implemented in consumer products for decades or even centuries in a few cases. Obvious chinks of our current theories (we know the Standard Model isn’t the Theory of Everything but it’s amazingly accurate and they think models reality for what it does encompass) would almost certainly have shown up by now. General Relativity is proven by atomic bombs and so far every experiment and observation done to prove it has passed, every one to disprove it failed. Same with Quantum Mechanics: they may not agree on the philosophical model of reality that it corresponds to ( Copenhagen interpretation vs others) but we know it WORKS when you apply it to reality and do something like design a microchip. These aren’t stupid people and if they are skeptical and heck, a bit stubborn it’s often for good reason. So many ‘breakthroughs’ and ‘new theories’ have crashed and burned against reality over the past 75 years I don’t blame them.

Emily Shelley

Okay, we know that General Relativity works HERE, on Earth, within the atmosphere… but have we ever detonated a nuke in space(out of range of the ISS for safety) just to see if maybe the laws of physics use a slightly(but significantly) different formula than it does on earth? Most of our tests are going to be at least somewhat affected by the core of the earth… we need some of these same tests conducted in space, away from the strong influence of earth’s iron core… I suspect that things work a little differently out there.

Clarence

Emily:

To my knowledge we have not detonated a nuke in space(though the computer models have been done, if , for no other reason than for nuclear pulse propulsion rockets) but we have observed and even interacted with nuclear powered objects like with probes to our Sun or telescopic observations of other stars and stellar phenomena.

Relativity has been proved not only with projects like Gravity Probe B but also with things like the calculation of the correct orbit for Mercury and the observation of ‘gravitational lensing’.

While I’d love to believe you are right (and you are hardly the first person to have that thought though it is an intelligent thought), the consensus is that there is no reason to THINK so.

Which doesn’t mean you are wrong. It means educated guesses based on past experimental and theoretical work say ‘nay’.

I’ve done my best to answer your question. I hope you find my answer useful and respectful and that you remember I am not God, not even the God of physics.

Mr_Blastman

Yes, we have detonated a nuke in space. Search for Starfish Prime. The nuke was detonated at 250 miles. The technical edge of space, the Karman line, is 62 miles.

Mr_Blastman

Yes, see post below. We’ve detonated a nuke in space. It worked perfectly.

Concern about Earth affecting physical laws has always been something physicists contend with. This is why we have tested things such as Special Relativity in both space and on Earth. We’ve also tested things like the speed of light and more in both places. And, to top that off, we’ve verified the laws of gravity (albeit we don’t know really what space-time is beyond curvature as theorized) on the Moon and Earth–and Mars! We’ve even used it as far out as Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, etc. to slingshot probes past planets and the math worked beautifully.

The laws of physics shouldn’t change no matter if you are on Earth, across the Galaxy or even halfway across our observable universe. You’d have to leave our universe entirely and if you did, things might be different there.

Mr_Blastman

All I know is the footage I have seen shows movement of the entire gurney the drive is strapped to. Movement I can see with my own eyes.

Now I’m the first to say reality, etc. is deceptive and our own senses are the worst determinants of its actuality–but the thing moves.
That alone is worth further study. I’m cautiously optimistic (I like to root for the little guy) and hope through experimentation they can find confirmation of some nuance overlooked that might explain/allow for this thing to work.

pmoseman

If only scientists weren’t so closed-minded [/sarcasm].

(The Argus iii was detonated above 500 km and the International Space Station orbits below 400 km)

Ulrich Werner

(What’s Argus III got to do with this?)

pmoseman

Emily (see conversation above, er… below for some reason?) said a nuclear warhead was never tested in space; something about general relativity. Argus III was tested in space. I do not know what it has to do with the rocket.

Bill

The buzz is gaining traction, I like it. Good article but as others are saying, replace fuel for propellant to rule out confusion. This is not a Perpetuam Mobile…

Did dr. White actually report the test article producing significantly more thrust than the control article? I read up on it but didn’t find out. It seems like NASA was asking for ideas to test for that in the conference paper they published.

Also nobody yet has (given) a clear development path forward while there are 3 – 4 teams independently tinkering with lab tests, the Sawyer team (if he has one), NASA (somewhat together with Nasaspacefilght.com forum engineers) and a Chinese team. We see a lot of pretty pictures of would be spaceships to tease the imagination but no real experiments in outer space. This thing should be tested in space and seen to actually accelerate a vehicle to be able to fully silence the skeptics because nobody understands the mechanics that link microwaves to these alleged “Quantum Vacuum Virtual Particles” or a Warp field. As long as it will not be demonstrated in space there will be grounds for debate. A demonstration (say, on the ISS) would either, once and for all debunk the theory and we could move on with other things or prove the concept and we should then put everything we got on this and break the chains that hold us captive in earths atmosphere.

Time for Musk to put in his two cents and help to get this to another level, I’d say…

disqus_dug

A working model on the space station ISS ? Fly around a room in weightlessness? No idea about the size of the contraptions.

Bill

I mean, strap one to the ISS and see if it can lift the thing instead of the booster rockets they use now. They currently use the booster from supply vessels to hop the ISS back into the desired orbit because it gradually decays. Sawyers original design intent for the EM drive was to move satellites without propellant. Demonstrating the EM drive with the ISS would be perfect, also because there are engineers at hand to repair/optimize.

Marc GP

The Chinese tested engine has enough thrust to keep the ISS in orbit as it is. It has already been proposed to mount it there :-).

It was reported (in SPR Ltd.’s website) that if the Chinese EM Drive were to be installed in the International Space Station (ISS) and work as reported, it could provide the necessary delta-V (change in velocity needed to perform an on-orbit maneuver) to compensate for the Station’s orbital decay and thus eliminate the requirement of re-boosts from visiting vehicles.

Stephen Voss

Lets test it on a small satellite instead, something where the consequences of failure are not so high.

Ulrich Werner

Oh boy. The quantum vacuum is rather well understood and so are virtual particles. A “warp field” is understood to exist only when there are negative energy densities in the form of the Alcubierre metric, something the EM Drive clearly cannot provide. And as far as I understand, nobody claims this thing produces a “warp field”. This thing is an utterly classical device…. if this “anomalous thrust” effect existed, we’d have seen it before.

If you compare the experimental results of these three teams you’ll notice that the measured “anomalous thrust” produced is shrinking with each new measurement. I believe we are firmly in the realm of bad science here.

Also, a test “on” the ISS will prove nothing. That doesn’t rule out the possibility that convection is to blame. What you want is a test “in space”.

Bill

“on the outside of the ISS like a booster rocket” not “inside the ISS” of course…

And I fully agree on your reaction. There’s all sorts of claims out there, including warping space… There’s simply not enough known about it.

Although I’d say the research should split into two paths:
1. more tinkering in the lab and debates on understanding the claimed mechanics of how EM drive and cannae work (IF AT ALL). but this will be a long and bitter debate with the inevitable accusations of false play and what have you…
2. build a test rig and strap it to a test vehicle, shoot it up and see if it flies. Just for fun… If it than flies, things would look a bit different right away, don’t you agree?

I think he meant to test it external to the ISS which would make it “in space”.

Cowpocalypse_Now

It’s not peer reviewed. The results are in a range just slightly above the lower limit of the measurement device. They cannot duplicate and scale results where more energy results in more thrust. Those are just a few of the big holes in this. To jump to conclusions and talk about such nonsense as warp drives is ridiculous.

It would never get you anywhere close to the speed of light so anyone who uses the word “warp drive” is spewing nonsense.

Lastly, the scientist that all of these reports come from has a history of releasing nonsense like this making far reaching claims that are never proven. As far as I know the scientific community doesn’t take him seriously.

Marc GP

It is not peer reviewed ?. They cannot duplicate and scale results where more energy results in more thrust ?.

It has been validated by the Chinese and two different sets of tests at NASA.

NASA’s test gave 50 micronewtons of thrust for 50W of power. The Chinese test gave 750 milinewtons of thrust for 2500W of power. I would say that it scales fantastically well.

Cowpocalypse_Now

Nothing has been peer reviewed. Google what that means instead of spreading more false information. If you have to point to Chinese studies as proof of something you are already in trouble.

NASA is quietly trying to distance themselves. What does that tell you?

Joel Hruska

Glad to see racism is alive and well. I agree with you that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence — I don’t think we need to imply that Chinese studies are implicitly or obviously of low quality simply by virtue of being carried out by the Chinese.

Cowpocalypse_Now

Haha….trying to make it about race…now that IS funny.

Joel Hruska

I didn’t make it about race. You did.

Let me quote, in case you forgot: ” If you have to point to Chinese studies as proof of something you are already in trouble.”

You didn’t say: “If you have to point at secondary studies performed at lab X, which has 1/10 the resources of a NASA facility, you are already in trouble.”

You didn’t say: “If you have to outsource your validation work to second sources because you can’t afford to do the full replication in-house, you are already in trouble.”

You didn’t say: “The Chinese confirmation studies were led by Doctor Wen Lo, a notorious crackpot who has a degree in anthropology, not rocket engineering or physics.”

You said: “If you have to point to Chinese studies.”

The *direct* meaning of this is that Chinese studies are second-rate, second-tier, and distinctly undesirable compared to studies performed by other groups. Given that you have offered no specific criteria regarding the studies themselves, nor the funding levels at the relevant institutions, nor any analysis of whether or not the institutions are accredited and staffed by professionals who are capable of performing the evaluation, the *only* conclusion one can draw from your stated opinion is that the studies are of lower quality BECAUSE THEY ARE CHINESE.

And that, my friend, is the textbook definition of a racist statement.

Marc GP

What’s your problem with the Chinese ?. Here is their analysis of this technology and the tests they have conducted.

Do you split your time between this and arguing in favor of cold fusion and faster than light neutrinos?

Marc GP

Hardly the same thing, they don’t have the kind of independent validation that this engine has reached.

Cowpocalypse_Now

Validation of results without knowing the reason? That is not how science is done. Part of the process of validation is a peer review. The fact you don’t seem to care about these things puts you in the tinfoil hat category.

Marc GP

And these three independent validations are the peer review you keep asking for.

This is exactly how science is done. Physics are not written in stone, when we discover facts that doesn’t accommodate to our theories we don’t hide those facts, we modify our theories to accommodate the new proven facts (or we even discard those theories completely and elaborate new theories from the ground up).

It has happened many times in the past and it will keep happening in the future (do I have to remind you that our two main physic theories, Relativity and Quantum Physics, are mutually incompatible ?, one day we will replace them for a complete theory that could extend from the very small to the very big).

Clarence

While I do feel Cow is trolling ( properly setup and replicated experiments ALWAYS will trump Theory) he is right in that these things have not been properly peer-reviewed. None of the three teams have used the exact same apparatus or setup and the Johnson researchers and the Chinese are using very different power levels. Honestly, I won’t feel this is being ‘peer reviewed’ UNTIL the (if it happens of course) the NASA researchers test at higher power and get confident enough there is an effect that is not spurious that they send it off to Hopkins and other groups inside and outside of NASA for testing. Only THEN will the mainstream physics community take this seriously, and at that point we can expect any decently equipped lab to try to replicate, as well as the Ultimate Test : hooking one of these things up to something in space. Assuming that (unlike with Cold Fusion where some labs claim to have and some claim not) it is replicable then we expect the Current Guardians of Theory to freak out – but they will probably have tremendous fun until they can find out what the current theories are missing.

Due to these predictions by Dr. White’s computer simulations NASA Eagleworks has started to build a 100 Watt to 1,200 Watt waveguide magnetron microwave power system that will drive an aluminum EM Drive shaped like a truncated cone.

I’m really jealous of the people that can work in such life-altering projects.

Cowpocalypse_Now

You still do not understand what “peer review” means. It’s a well established formal process. Not that someone else got similar results.

There is a good chance it will not even get that far until more credible scientists get involved. This particular scientist has a history of making outrageous claims based on sketchy data and is not taken seriously by the general scientific community. Kind of like the cold fusion guys.

The fact NASA is quietly trying to distance itself from these findings should tell you something. This guy may be looking for alternative funding in the near future.

Marc GP

Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people of similar competence to the producers of the work.

Who of the independent reviewers are known as unreliable scientists ?. Prof. Juan Yang from the The North Western Polytechnical University, Xi’an ?. Doctor Harold G. White , lead of the Eagleworks group that has been evaluating the EMDrive ?, Engineer Paul March that has reported the successful tests in vacuum ?, José Rodal, Ph.D, Jeremiah Mullikin and Noel Munson, researchers at the Johnson Space Center that has also reported thrust confirmations in vacuum ?, the NASA researchers that had reported that faster-than-light laser beams measurements could mean that the EmDrive have produced warp bubbles ?.

By the way, the last test article of the Eagleworks group will be subjected to independent verification and validation at Glenn Research Center, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Johns Hopkins University.

So, please, which one of these independent reviewers do you consider unreliable ?.

How the NASA is distancing from these findings when they are preparing a new test in vacuum to detect the possible warp bubble and they are also preparing new tests to confirm the escalate of thrust at higher power levels (1200 W) ?.

Science starts with an observation and then you go on to making hypotheses and then testing them ultimately arriving at a working theory. They are observing that this device does indeed produce thrust; they ARE NOT publishing a theory on how it works. Maybe you need to look into the telescope yourself rather than deriding Galileo a crackpot for saying what he sees.

Stephen Voss

What happens in those rare moments that validated experimental results outrace the current scientific theory? Isnt that when new hypotheses have to be created?

Tune in next week when we discuss perpetual motion machines and how physics has it all wrong and how the gov’t knows this because the space aliens told them in the underground bunker at area 51. If you disagree you are an alien racist. Aliens are people too…ahh well no…ok ya nevermind.

Skooma Steve

you must be from the church. only someone from the church would try so hard to shoot down scientific research.

To quote Physicist John Baez….
“if you don’t know physics, it sounds very exciting”

Goes on to describe Shawyers latest mumbo jumbo and then says…

“…This is baloney too – but now it’s graduate-level baloney”

” “Quantum vacuum virtual plasma” is something you’d say if you failed a course in quantum field theory and then smoked too much weed. There’s no such thing as “virtual plasma”. If you want to report experimental results that seem to violate the known laws of physics, fine. But it doesn’t help your credibility to make up goofy pseudo-explanations.”

I’m curious about that last question – for someone so vocal you must really be an expert. With Dr. Whom is the majority in disagreement?

Joe

Warp drive has already been developed and is working but only on nano scale because they can’t keep the warp bubble stable at anything larger than the nano level. We also have no ability to collect, safely store and safely use Anti-Matter for Warp technology (except for in nano amounts) as of today.

Mikael Murstam

Source?

Bill

Source?
otherwise… Sci Fi

Mikael Murstam

why do you reply to me?

alexw

Star Trek Voyager

Bill

LOL

Cowpocalypse_Now

WOOP woop woop…tinfoil hat alert…..lol.

Bill

For once I must say I agree with the Cow…

But if Joe does not wear Tinfoil headwear and there’s some actual validity to Joe’s post, I’d kindly like to ask him to supply us with some links to sources?

Cowpocalypse_Now

Some scifi he saw once when he forgot to take the meds that help him distinguish realty from fantasy.

Resist_Tyranny

What a waste.

Mikael Murstam

Please replace every instance of the word “fuel” with “propellant” in the article please. It uses no propellant, but it could still need fuel, a reactor for instance. It doesn’t have to use solar panels.

Banana_Justice

Right you are. When they misrepresent the concept so terribly, it’s no wonder so few people are willing to give the idea a second glance.

The “Fundamental Laws of Physics” are really just our understanding of our environment but they aren’t natures laws and we have to take time to keep that in mind. If every scientific endeavor must first validate something written by someone long dead, then its not science, its a litmus test and vastly unhelpful.

Carl

True. These are no Laws of the Universe, only human-made theorems describing our own limited interpretations of physics. But scientific knowledge still marches on, long after Newton and Einstein left this world. I will not be surprised if someday the established laws of physics and the relativity theory collapse due to scientific advances.

Exactly. That happens fairly often though lately in the fields of all things skyward. Someone theorized that Jupiter sized gas giants would fall roughly the same distance from the relevant sun as Jupiter from its host star. The author went on to argue that Jupiter sized planets could not be close to their host star for whatever reasons. Guess what…thanks to the latest optics they’ve found that our Jupiter is the oddball, while its peers are basically hugging their stars. Interestingly there was someone who made the case that Jupiter class planets could be near their host stars and that guy was laughed at while the theory that turned out to be wrong became the working theory for decades. For the most part we only know what we encounter and yet arrogantly try to establish what we encounter as being definitive.

ackthbbft

And the best part is that it looks very steampunk.

Banana_Justice

“This makes it seem uncomfortably close to an attempt at a perpetual motion machine”. Now how did you come up with an idea like that? One of the things that makes it difficult for the educated layman to have hope in the emdrive is when irresponsible statements like yours are made.

johnBas5

Maybe the author of the article is confused about the difference between fuel and propellant?

Pretty much the modern day version of the perpetual motion machine yes. Will always be people around who will believe in it. Just like there are people who think the moon landings were a hoax. Just like there will be some who believe in space aliens who seem to have a fetish for obducting people from trailer parks.

Banana_Justice

Perpetual motion is using some energy to generate more energy. That is completely unrelated to propulsion without propellant.

Boris

The proposed *devices* have been traditionally very similar. Google for the images of “Gyroscopic Inertial Thruster” and the like, and then for “Perpetual Motion Machine”.

Heck, I “invented” one when I was a kid – two electromagnets on strings bouncing back-and-forth from each other, arranged so that centrifugal force would pull the spacecraft along.

If only somebody tried it in orbit, I’d be famous!

Jose Flores

Infinite Improbability Drive when?

Casecutter

If we made them stop arguing in the comfort of earths atmosphere… they might be able to truly debunk it for good, while then contemplate a way to make something work so they’d be able to come back. That how you motivate for preeminent scientific achievements, if not oh well.

AllSeasonRadial

Meanwhile, how are things progressing on the cold fusion front?

Wall

Cold fusion could not be replicated, and was hence quickly identified as false.
The effects that where detected where using tritium, and where basically just regular radioactive processes. (Tritium is very radioactive).

This however is being succefully replicated by multiple teams. The only other wild device i have seen successfully tested like this was the “lifter”. That one didn’t pass the vaccume test, and was basically an ion thruster. (Which ironically is also used in space).

Dave

How come all these articles don’t say how long before the next test will be carried out by NASA? Or how long before they rerun the interfermometer tests in a vacuum? Or how much it costs to set up and do one of these tests?

johnBas5

Could be because they don’t know yet.

Dave

I thought the point of Journalism was to answer questions and not simply report and analyze stock press releases.

johnBas5

In other reports and news sources you can read the researchers are working on a shoestring budget. And the next steps, to build a magnetron based 100 – 1100 W version that should output 0.016 to 0.3 Newton.

Question: with drives like this which give you continuous acceleration getting you to Mars in 70 days, just how do they slow down once they get there? Or would you spend half the trip accelerating and the other half braking?

Wall

Exactly, you just turn 180 degrees, and keep firing to slow down the second half of the trip. If the high power version of this works though, it would be less than a week at 1g acceleration.

adamrussell

Dont make a mistake though, because it will take you forever to make any corrections.

protn7

these are going to be interesting times to live through

Boris

Like others said, the claim is propellant-free (aka reactionless), not fuel-free.
Now, even if it did work (which I consider to be about as likely as the countless perpetual motion machines before it), the low efficiency would absolutely kill it for space propulsion.
If you’re 0.1% effective at accelerating the craft, you’re 99.9% effective at heating it. And vacuum is an excellent insulator.

Phil Blank

Look, the new Star Wars movies coming out, all kinds 8f jokers will jump online and make wild claims that were in the past movies INCLUDING Star Trek movies and the TV show.

They did make clear aluminum a few years ago, but it on lasted a few seconds.
Recently in the news someone else actually made it, I watched it on Cleveland news only a few days ago and the explained how they made it.
Better than Sapphire Glass!

Phil Blank

Look close at the above image..
On the left, there is a small motor with gears.
On the large end to the top right there is a radio frequency imput connector, the silver thing on top,
Shouldn’t the radio energy go in the other end?
Radio energy is the microwave energy.
If you’re operating at microwave frequencies, you don’t use wires, you use wave guides that appear as wires on the outside, but the inside is hollow, the energy flows through the hollow tube as radio Frequency energy into the unit, you would not have a connector of that type as your input.

This is no Warp or EM drive!
Probably something someone found at a surplus electronic “junk” store.

Good article, and as a layman I will say this. We got a drive here that doesn’t use propellant. Stop! Congratulations already, this is a huge step forward. Discovery of a unknown previous source of energy.

There is also indications that it may be producing a Warp Bubble. Again! Amazing, and will be fleshed out even more in the coming 30 years.

This is the reason I setup 1 year ago a donation monthly to places like Mars One. The more brain power we get into development and research, and influence for the minds of the young to go into these fields. The sooner we go too the Stars. =D

William Ferguson

The article unhelpfully refers to “fuel” when it really means reaction mass. The EM drive still requires fuel (because it requires power), but it doesn’t require reaction mass. This disconnect is what makes the EM drive such a tantalizing beast.

ELLAS

EM Drive? Bring it on, its about time, because we are in need of a real space ship for interstellar travel and beyond.

Kae Davis

Awesome… Ahem. ;) <3

lylejk

Wow; if they are indeed warping space, then this technology needs to be beyond tested further. This could be the game changer needed for traveling to other stars. If this is indeed what’s happening, then we may be sooner to warp drive then anyone dreamed. :)

Cowpocalypse_Now

Good luck waiting for that. Maybe you can convert your car to cold fusion while you are waiting.

adamrussell

Actually, its not at all impossible to imagine a drive that uses no matter as propellant. Just use light instead (or electromagnetic radiation). It wont give you much but it will give you some.

Most scientific inventions since at least the 18th century have followed scientific theory by decades if not centuries. Take the Bernoulli’s principle and the Wright Brothers. Yet if the so-called EM Drive is even close to credible, then it shatters a fundamental principle in physics and our entire understanding of the physical world.

IAF101

Article should be titled ” NASA’s Eagleworks takes a hammer to Physics”.

Well. If you fail to recocnise a falsehood, the world of bullshit will always be open for you.

nitemarejim

I wish the article and others didn’t use the term “warp drive” because the tinfoil hat people glom onto this phrase, and write 3rd-hand articles claiming interstellar travel is here, or else being suppressed by NASA’s refutation.

Where are all the cold-fusion plants that these same people were claiming were coming online to produce all that cheap electricity?

As I understand it, the engine does NOT operate without FUEL, it operates without REACTION MASS. There is a difference. It still uses energy (fuel) to move, but, if it works, it does not need to push anything out the back so to speak.

Belegost

Graham any update on this,

The Telegraph just had a new article that is full of really silly comments (shocking, of course).

The thing is, its not a perpetual motion machine, because you do use a source. You resonate with the frequency that you wish to push or pull against. Therefore there is an equal and opposite reaction. — When built correctly, this machine that you all have a “glimpse” of, has the ability to resonate with the magnetic fields of not only our planet, moon, and sun – when built correctly, this creates a uniform flow of all subatomic particles out the front and around the system into the resonance cavity, counter waves are produced near the head of the system with opposite polarity to create overall system resonance. These particles running on the outer edge of the subatomic energy torus roll the torus forward, your “warp bubble” that you resonate to stay within — a hint from our friends: geometry is key.

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